Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Anera527
Summary: The battle of New York has long since passed and the Avengers have slowly knitted together into a functional team. when one of their own is taken, however, they will find out just how far they're willing to go to save them. CA/WS, IM3 compliant, ignores AoU. No slash!
1. Chapter 1

" _ **Nothing Gold Can Stay"**_

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 _Crooked souls trying to stay up straight  
Dry eyes in the pouring rain  
The shadow proves the sunshine  
The shadow proves the sunshine_

-"Shadows Prove the Sunshine", Switchfoot

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Chapter 1

"Damn it," Tony Stark snarled in a mix of fury and desperation. His heart was flying and painful in his chest, practically banging against his rib cage, and his stomach was roiling with fear, of a strange foreign sense of helplessness. Not that he would ever admit to feeling that way, of course. He was Tony Stark, billionaire playboy philanthropist, damn it, and would sooner die than admit he was scared.

The smell of electricity filled the air and the floor seemed to tremble as Tony's companion landed beside him. Tony barely heard the swish of a cape on the ground, distracted as he was.

"What in Odin's name?" Thor breathed, and the utterance only made the inventor's heartbeat skyrocket realizing that even the god of thunder was thoroughly taken aback. Smoke drifted lazily between them, acrid and choking, as they surveyed the scene of destruction laid out before their astonished eyes.

Glass crunched under Tony's shoes as he came out of the shattered living room, cursing under his breath. "Everything's wrecked." He didn't want to sound like he was whining—he was a grown man, after all—but this was his house, his tower, and now it was in shambles. Thoroughly. "Jarvis?"

There was no answer. The walls stayed frighteningly silent, and it was then that Tony felt like truly panicking.

Whoever—or whatever—had attacked had managed to take out his AI, the tower's first line of defense.

"Perhaps your invisible butler merely cannot communicate to us," Thor offered hesitantly, still looking around at the mess. "It appears a mighty battle took place here, after all."

"Way to state the obvious, Goldilocks," Tony snapped, abruptly in no mood to deal with Thor's Asgardian mindset. He bit his tongue to stop himself from continuing, however, stopped himself from stating that the only reason why Jarvis wouldn't be responding to his master's call would be his utter scrambling and/or destruction. Thor wouldn't understand the technical terms, after all—he still thought that Jarvis was magic.

But as obvious as Thor's latter statement was, however, Tony had to agree with it. The fight that had torn through Avengers Tower had clearly been desperate and brutal. Tony and Thor were only about halfway up the different levels and most had moderate to extensive damage. Walls dented or completely crushed, doors hanging off their hinges or splintered all over the floor. Windows had been smashed, glass glittering in the dim light.

And the bodies. Most of them dead.

They blended into the shadows like some type of ninja, so obscured that Tony had almost tripped over one of them. Not a bit of skin showed through their black garb and there was nothing to identify them by, no way to tell if they were AIM or Hydra or some weird alien race that the team would very soon become acquainted with. Necks were cracked, congealing blood puddled on the floor, bones were snapped or shattered. The sheer brutality of the injuries startled Tony, making his stomach burn with bile.

"It's like a cornered creature lashing out," Thor said as he went his own way, and Tony could only agree with him now. For once Thor had explained something completely accurately. "Who was here when they attacked?" Tony demanded to himself.

The team all came and went as they pleased. Tony was the only permanent resident in Avengers Tower but all of them knew without having to ask that his home was open to them all if they needed it. Therefore Tony usually had a surprise guest or two show up at all hours and any day, and he didn't know who to expect when. Sometimes it was Bruce, back from whatever self-imposed exile he had set for himself and settling himself into one of Tony's many labs. Other times it would be Clint or Steve. Clint was usually by himself but sometimes Bucky would be trailing after Steve like a silent black thundercloud.

"Anthony," Thor's voice boomed out in the grim silence, startling Tony from his thoughts. The Asgardian's tone made his stomach clench. Thor had left the main room and had wandered into the stairwell to the right.

"What? What is it?" Tony hurried to reach Thor's side, hoping that maybe he had merely found one of the team unconscious somewhere below—but Thor was staring down with a truly frightening look on his face over the railing.

"Oh shit," Tony muttered, the blood draining from his face.

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"They took Cap?" Clint demanded thirty minutes later. The Avengers—minus their captain—stood in the decimated remains of the tower. Jarvis was still down and the lights were flickering on and off.

"And managed to upload one hell of a virus into my security systems," Tony said darkly, tapping away at a computer in hopes of getting it going again. "It looks like it scrambled Jarvis to bits, locked him out of his own domain. I can't fix the virus yet, it's going to take days." He smacked his palm against the table in frustration as the computer kicked him off again, cursing under his breath. "And I can't get the security tapes going at all to see what these bastards were after."

"It appears that they were after Steve," Natasha said coolly from where she stood near the door. She was appraising the damage done to one of the bodies that Tony and Thor had brought in for analysis, her expression devoid of emotion. "The security going down must have alerted him to the intruders, he was able to defend himself, after all."

"They may have been after Steve, yes, but he may also have been taken simply as a bargaining chip," Bruce spoke up quietly. "There are countless objects in here that our enemies are desperate to get their hands on."

"As much as I would like to believe you, Bruce," Tony said, turning away from the table, "I don't think they were after my stuff. No, they were after Cap."

Natasha looked away from Thor's unnaturally grave expression. "How do you know?"

Tony turned to Thor, eyes dark. "Show 'em."

And the room, already quiet, went completely silent as Thor slowly brought out Tony's evidence.

The white star glinted dully in the light as Thor laid Steve's shield out on the table. Its color was splattered with blood and paint had peeled away from the force of bullets. And there, directly in the center, a perfect circular indention caved the once-proud star inwards.

 _Captain America's_ indestructible shield was dented. Broken. And left to sit in the destruction of the fight as proof that the intruders had taken one of the Avengers' own.

Clint cursed and spoke what they were all suddenly thinking. "We're in trouble."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

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A/N: Please forgive my lack of scientific knowledge in this chapter. I'm interested in science to an extent but it's by no means my forte.

To one reviewer's question: The title is in fact from the Robert Frost poem alluded to in _The Outsiders_. The book is one of my all-time favorites, but I'm adding my own twist to the poem's meaning in this.

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"I've never seen anything like this before!"

Bruce's exclamation was a mix of anger and awe and exasperation, echoing in the vast lab in Avengers' Tower. The doctor's voice was quite the guttural growl of the Hulk's but it still caused Tony to pop his head over the top of the far table.

"Calm down, big guy," he warned, only partly in jest. "This place is trashed enough without the Hulk tearing through it, too."

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a stress headache starting to pound. "I'm not going to fly off the handle, Tony. This is just…"

"Frustrating as hell," Tony supplied helpfully, climbing to his feet stiffly. He grimaced to himself, knowing he had stayed still too long. His pants and dark shirt were oil-splattered and stained from his tinkering during the night, and it was clear from his haggard expression and dark eyes that, like with the rest of the group, sleep had eluded him. "And utterly unfair that these bastards have somehow stumped our brilliance."

Bruce snorted, for the first time unamused by Tony's arrogant sarcasm. He turned back to the computer screen of results that sat blinking before him. "Adamantium is indestructible. C'mon, this thing even withheld Thor's hammer without a scratch! What in the world could _dent_ it?"

It had been three days since the Avengers had discovered the ruin of the Tower and the abduction of their Captain. Three whole freaking days, and none of them had discovered any information of any use. A closer look at the bodies strewn around had shown the team that the ones who had not been killed by Steve had taken their own lives, giving the Avengers no chance to interrogate them, and there had been nothing to affiliate them to any group. Natasha had left to find Fury, hoping for his help in finding Cap, and Clint had gone with her. As they had both previously been SHIELD agents it seemed fitting.

In the startled silence following Bruce's latest outburst, Tony suddenly stilled. "Wait." He stood for a moment in thought, a frown creasing his forehead as he considered possibilities. "What if it was nothing _worldly_?"

Bruce stared at him, taken aback. "So we could be dealing with people who have made weapons from alien technology." Like SHIELD had been willing to do with the Tesseract, he thought, and felt his stomach clench with the remembered anger of that moment, the disappointment that he was helping a people who were no better than the ones they said they were fighting against. The situation was vastly different from then, but he found that he was no less upset about it. "There could be any number of organizations that could've made that type of technology, though. A lot of them are probably ones we've never heard of." He turned back to the shield still sitting on his table. Its center was still dented inwards and in this lighting it looked pitiful.

And painful. It was clear that it had been on the stairwell that Steve had been finally overwhelmed. The twisted railing and blood-smeared stairs beneath the shield were testaments to that fact; they had no way of truly knowing but both Tony and Bruce agreed that it appeared that Steve had been blown backwards from the blast created by the weapon that had dented his shield and had hit the railing before sliding over it onto the stairs some ten feet below. Not even a super soldier would be able to escape injury from something like that. They could only hope that he had not been mortally hurt.

"I'm going to run another scan, see if we can pick up any unusual residue on the shield." Bruce paused for a moment, his fingers hovering above the keypad, before typing in a command. "We haven't looked at this thing on a molecular level, yet."

Tony looked over from his own computer screen. "I think we're off our game." He had been working feverishly on eliminating the virus from Jarvis's system since that night, desperate to find some answers. Desperate to fix _something_. From his muttered curses and growls Bruce didn't think it was working very well, but he hoped that Tony was still making some sort of headway all the same. Clint and Natasha were out keeping busy; Thor was out searching as well, trying to find some sign of Cap; and Bruce was busy scanning the shield and studying the bodies. From experience, however, Bruce knew how frustrating it was when you didn't feel like you were helping, and Tony was not the most patient of people to begin with.

He was just starting to receive preliminary results from the scan when a sudden loud crashing from outside the doors caused both of them to jump. Tony was immediately grabbing one of his suit's repulsor rays for protection and Bruce tried to keep the Other Guy from growling too loudly. But then they heard the voices that accompanied the crash.

"—you don't want to go in, they're busy—"

"—damn it, Falcon, if you don't let me through I swear to God I'll dump you on your ass!"

The doors of the lab opened at the tail end of the furious exclamation to reveal the last unaccounted for (honorary) Avenger. It was clear that wherever he had been Bucky had not been bothered to keep up with appearances; his hair was tangled and long again, framing his face wildly like it had after Steve had dragged him for the first time to the Tower, and several days' worth of beard covered his jaw, barely concealing the dirt smudged over his skin. It was well known among the team that Bucky often went off by himself for weeks at a time without barely a word to any of them. No one asked him why. The knives and guns and dark look to his eyes always said.

Right now, those guns and knives still strapped to his body were not nearly as frightening as the fury that was twisting the former assassin's face. "Who are they?" he growled.

"Well, hello to you, too, Icy," Tony said sarcastically, in no way daunted. "Finally decided to join the party, huh? You're a bit late."

"Cut the crap, Stark. Where are the bastards that took Steve?"

Bruce answered before Tony could reply in his usual way and begin an argument. It was well known that neither Tony nor Bucky really cared for each other. "We haven't been able to find out, yet," he said quietly. Those unsettling eyes swung his way. "They're completely unknown, we have nothing on them."

Sam quietly walked up behind Bucky, looking apologetically at the two Avengers. They had suspected that when Bucky discovered Steve's disappearance he would act this way, but it was still unsettling to see full assassin/protective-older-brother mode on him. He looked like he would shoot them all full of holes if they said the slightest inflection wrong. " _Make_ them known, then, Banner."

"We'd love to," Tony snapped irritably from his computer, "but they're _ghosts_. They've vanished like a virgin on prom night."

Bruce rolled his eyes at Tony's pop culture reference but before he could begin to reply Bucky's retort stopped him.

"It takes a ghost to find a ghost, then, doesn't it?"

"You can't just go on a wild goose chase here, Barnes." Tony stopped his tapping at his computer and crossed his arms. "We have no intel, no knowledge, _nothing_ , on these guys. It's not like you hunting down those HYDRA goons."

Bucky's mouth twisted in a bitter grin. "I'm the Winter Soldier, Stark. I'm the best damn assassin and spy HYDRA ever had, so if you think I can't find a trail to these guys then you're more stupid than I originally thought."

"That's enough!" Bruce snapped, and this time his voice definitely sounded closer to the Hulk's; all of them froze, argument effectively paused for the moment. His headache throbbed for a moment; it did nothing to improve his mood. "Arguing isn't solving anything, and it certainly won't help us find Steve. Tony, we need every bit of information we can get and you know that if there's anyone who could probably find it, it's him. And James—" here he swung his own glare to the former assassin; at least Bucky had the decency to realize his childishness and shift uncomfortably, "you know that as soon as Tony finds out where these guys have taken Steve he'll be flying out there to get him back. So both of you stop this and work together without—"

The beeping of the test interrupted his lecture, cutting through the sudden quiet like a knife. He turned to look at what the computer had found and froze, eyes widening.

Tony stepped closer. "What's the doom and gloom forecast now then?"

Bruce's fingers were flying at the keyboard, immersed in the information displayed. "It's impossible, for one thing," he said softly. "The shield wasn't just dented, Tony. Its molecular structure was moved."

Sam frowned, thrown by the explanation. "What? The molecular structure was _what_?"

"It _moved_ ," Bruce repeated. "Literally. Like a bite of it was simply pushed."

"But adamantium is impervious to any forms of attack!" Tony protested. "That's why it's called _indestructible_."

Bruce shook his head. "The weapon fired at it was geared towards the adamantium specifically. It seems to be some kind of high-voltage energy that loosened the metal's strength for just a split second—not enough to shatter it. Just enough to injure Steve."

"You said energy," Bucky said. "Electrical?"

The awful implications of the question hung in the air between the four of them; not even Captain America could survive electrocution at such a high voltage."

"I don't know. The readings are vague, it's barely giving me anything… but I don't think so. We didn't smell any electrical discharge the other night, anyway—if it had been electrical then we would have been able to know immediately."

The answer helped assuage some of the fear hanging in the air, but the implications of the news was still unsettling enough. "So these guys were after Cap the whole time—and now they know just how effective their weapons are." Sam's voice was laced with the knowledge. "We've gotta find him soon." He looked over at Bucky. "You want a hand looking for these bastards?"

Bucky looked at him impassively for a long moment. "Only if you can keep up."

"Don't you worry about me, Grandpa. I'm not the one in my nineties."

Bucky's and Sam's relationship was certainly an interesting one. Similar in ribbing as the former assassin's and Tony's, but it was clear that Bucky genuinely _liked_ Sam, and so instead of responding coldly he merely grinned at the jab at his age—a grin that very quickly vanished at Bruce's next question.

"Who told you about Steve, anyway, James?"

That dark expression was back. "No one. I went to his apartment in DC before heading on my way."

"They trashed his apartment before coming here?"

"They didn't trash it." Now Bucky's expression grew troubled, confused; the anger cooled into sadness. Stepping up to the table with the shield, he lifted his flesh arm and deposited his load onto its surface, and Bruce and Tony were left staring in genuine confusion at what they were looking at: bright pastels and muted watercolors and shaded charcoal. All of the individual papers were crinkled and partially ripped, handled by uncaring fingers and trampled by dirty shoes.

"All of Steve's drawings were looked at and studied."


End file.
